UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I went over and strangled Mrs. O`Hara (ph). I thought she was down.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Personality would just change.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I strangled Josephine (ph), and then I killed her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CASAREZ: And we go to Valhalla. Visit after visit to the hospital turns into heartbreak for a grieving mother when her 5-year-old son dies.

She even chronicles it all on social media. Then in a stunning twist, when the mother is accused of injecting a lethal dose of salt into her son`s

feeding tube. Tonight, the case heads back to court, but the mother is a no-show.

Good evening. I`m Jean Casarez, in for Nancy Grace. Thank you so much for joining us tonight.

It could happen to anyone, a family road trip turns tragic. They are traveling down the interstate for a summer vacation when the front

windshield is hit by an eight-pound rock. And tonight, police say this is no accident.

Out to Michael Board, reporter with WOAI news radio. What happened?

MICHAEL BOARD, WOAI: This is a family who was driving down Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania, and from out of nowhere, a rock came falling out of the

sky.

The investigators say the rock was eight pounds, so I went out to a construction site next to our station, and I found a rock that`s eight

pounds big. This is bigger than my head. I can barely hold this up for very long.

This fell from two stories high, an overpass, fell right down onto the windshield of a Nissan SUV, hitting the face of a woman who was riding in

the passenger seat. The investigators who are looking into this, the medical teams, say there were so many fractures that this rock caused, they

stopped counting. There were so many fractures, they couldn`t -- they stopped counting, there are so many that this rock did.

CASAREZ: And Michael Board, this is a teacher, this is a breast cancer survivor on a summer vacation with her family. And we have

interstates all over this country. This is Interstate 80 where this happened, and that goes coast to coast.

Tell me more, though, Clark Goldband. What time of night was it? How did it happen? And just some particulars to this.

CLARK GOLDBAND, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: All right, Jean. Let`s go from your first question, and I`ll continue from there. Happened right before

midnight. And perhaps most disturbing, the 19-year-old daughter -- they`re on a family vacation -- is driving, like so many of us this time of year,

taking vacations.

She hears what`s only termed as an explosion, this eight-pound rock hovering (ph) down from over 20 feet in the air, smashing her mom in the

face. Some disturbing details on what happens to Mom, Jean, so disturbing, it`s not even something we can report at the family hour, the type and

extent of the damage that was done to this mother and teacher.

Jean, what were your other questions?

CASAREZ: You know, I`m going to switch right now because we have got a special guest and joining us, and it takes so much courage for him to

join us tonight. But this is Randy Budd. This is Sharon Budd`s husband, the father a the 19-year-old daughter that was driving the car.

Mr. Budd, your wife is in the hospital. What is her condition tonight as we speak?

RANDY BUDD, HUSBAND (via telephone): Well, thank you for having me on the show. First of all, the -- my wife is -- they don`t know. The brain

has not stopped swelling.

Here`s what we do know, is that she`s been heavily sedated. She`s got -- upon command she potentially can move her fingers and toes. We

obviously have not been able to talk with her.

What we know is that she has definitely lost her right eye. The left eye is definitely in question. Her face -- when that rock hit her, it hit

her right head-on, right through that windshield, busted her top portion of her face backwards and split it out. They are doing a surgery, extensive

all-day surgery tomorrow to try to put her face back together.

No one knows how she`s going to come out of this, if she comes out of it, and if she`ll ever know us or -- or anybody. But we have hope. She`s

a strong lady. We have hope that -- she has had some reaction. She`s in critical care, and she has been in critical care ever since she`s went to

Geisinger. So she`s -- she`s not in good shape. Her life has changed forever.

She was so impactful with her 7th grade students. They absolutely love her. She saved a child`s life in the classroom. She`s been

recognized over and over. And so it`s not just our family, but it`s all these kids that are going to be denied the Sharon Budd teaching. She`s

taken introverts and made them great kids, and it`s all for just a senseless, violent act.

CASAREZ: And we are going to get into that. But first, Mr. Budd, I want everyone to understand that you and your family were on a summer

vacation. You were driving on Interstate 80 from Ohio to the New York area, New York City. Everybody wants to come to New York City. And you

were traveling through Pennsylvania on Interstate 80.

You were in the back seat, and your daughter was driving. Can you just describe for us what you heard, what you felt, as this boulder just

was thrown at you from an overpass?

BUDD: Yes. First, you know, there`s some guilt there because I always drive, but I had a long work week, and I drove about the first 250

miles and was getting a little tired, and that`s not safe. And Kaylee -- Kaylee`s a trooper. She said, Dad, let me take the wheel for an hour, go

in the back seat and I`ll take over, and then you can drive us into New York.

So I was sitting in the back seat. And the one thing that just happened right before it happened -- my son is being deployed to

Afghanistan. And my wife on a whim called him, and he typically doesn`t answer because they`re in heavy training, but he answered the phone and we

had him on speakerphone.

And anyway, and my wife was crying of joy to talk with him. And then she said, Luke, you know, can you take a selfie? And anyway, he took a

selfie reluctantly, but he did, and he sent it to his mom. And she showed it to me. And I was in the back seat, and she was crying. And I was

rubbing her shoulders. And then he kicked back another e-mail that said, Mom, I miss you.

And I was rubbing her shoulders and I just sat back. And it was -- we were all awake, and all of a sudden -- if somebody would have put a grenade

in that car, that`s what it sounded like. It just was an explosion. And none of us -- you know, we didn`t know what had happened. I looked up and

just saw a big, big hole in the windshield.

I still didn`t know -- my daughter started screaming. She goes, Dad, what should I do? What happened? And I said -- and so I talked -- I

talked to her over to the side of the highway. We came to a stop. She turned the lights on and saw her mom`s head sideways, and saw the most

gruesome thing that probably anybody could ever see, with her head split open, with her face and her skull and brains visible.

Kaylee screamed and ran from the car. I immediately ran around to the car to see what she saw. And oh, my God, it was gruesome. And I called

911 immediately. Kaylee -- she`s so strong. She came right back in. So I was on the passenger side. Kaylee climbed in in the driver`s side, and we

just held her hand.

And we thought at the time she was just bleeding out. She -- there was blood coming out of her nose, her mouth, her brain. And then she came

to, and when I mean came to, she started moving. And she was just moving all over the place and trying to grab at her face. She -- I don`t know if

she remembers it. And we were trying to keep her hands down so she didn`t injure it more.

And then she started -- she started gurgling in her own blood. And we just kept waiting and waiting for the ambulance. And the only way she

could breathe was through her brain! She would breathe heavy, and it would come out of her brain, and it was -- oh, my God, it was terrible!

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Threw a rock from an overpass.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: About an eight-inch boulder came right through the windshield, hitting Sharon square in the face.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I saw her face, and it was bad.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`ve never seen anything like it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She`s still in critical condition.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CASAREZ: As we have been telling you tonight, Sharon Budd, who is a middle school teacher out of Ohio, is clinging to life tonight. She was on

a family vacation. They were driving at night. They went under an overpass, and an eight-pound rock, or boulder, as the school district is

describing it, came straight through the front windshield, into her head and her skull.

Joining us tonight is Randy Budd, the husband of Sharon Budd. But I want to go to Dr. Joyce Carter -- Joye Carter, the chief forensic

pathologist of Marion County, Indiana. This was an eight-pound rock, but it was thrown at about 22 to 25 feet from above. With the force of

gravity, that`s not eight pounds, correct, that went into her face and head?

DR. JOYE M. CARTER, FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST (via telephone): That`s correct. This is a law of physics. This object becomes heavier with the

speed and the energy that it takes. You imagine a bullet being fired from a gun. It`s that energy that causes the damage. You have this huge area

of energy and the devastating injuries that it produces to this woman`s head. This is absolutely a devastating injury, as we`ve heard the husband

say (INAUDIBLE)

CASAREZ: Doctor, I also want to ask you, once they did emergency procedures, they called in specialists, and it was a very risky thing to

do, but they had to allow the brain to swell, so they took off the front part of her skull. Can you just explain what that is and why that`s done?

CARTER: Well, they`re hoping to prevent any further brain damage. The brain`s reaction to trauma, any insult, is to swell. And the adult

brain has very little room to swell within the skull, so they have to give it some room. So they do take off the skull to allow the brain to swell

without any further injury. And they`re hoping to alleviate any further brain damage that that swelling could cause.

CASAREZ: Now, two teenagers at this point have been arrested, 18- year-old Brett Lahr and 17-year-old Dylan Lahr. And they are both being charged as adults, aggravated assault, conspiracy to commit aggravated

assault, three counts of propelling a missile into an oncoming vehicle. It goes on from there.

But joining us tonight is their attorney, Brian Manchester, who is joining us out of Bellfont (ph), Pennsylvania, central Pennsylvania. Thank